The main streets of the city are overshadowed by several fine Solares, the mansions of the old hidalgos, and, beside all its churches and monasteries, the town boasts an attractive Guildhall. But perhaps its most interesting feature is supplied by the crowd that frequents them; for Leon is the metropolis of a big agricultural population, a grave and stalwart race attired in the most picturesque old-world costumes. The dresses of the women are perhaps somewhat lacking in brightness; for they have a taste for sombre shades, especially a mauve-coloured head kerchief which does not accord nearly so well with their olive complexions as the brilliant scarlets and yellows of the girls in Galicia and the south. But this quakerish tinge in the individual does not produce much effect in the aggregate, and they look bright enough in the busy market beneath their forest of umbrella-shaped{63} booths. They are reputed to “wear Carambas in their hair,” but this we cannot corroborate. They kept them discreetly covered with the kerchief—perhaps from fear of the police. In any case it is to be hoped that the fashion will not spread indiscriminately. Imagine a German lady in a “Donnerwetter” coiffure!
CHAPTER IV
THE PILGRIM ROAD
“He that is minded to go to Santiago may fare thither in many ways both by sea and land”;—and to continue in Sir John Mandeville’s vein we might add “by the heavens also,” for our old friend the Galaxy—Milk Street as it has been irreverently nicknamed—masquerades in Spain as the “Santiago road.” The Holy Apostle himself stranded at El Padron (after a rapid passage from Joppa in three days and in a stone coffin); and the pious pilgrims of our own land were wont for the most part to take ship to Coruña. But the main pilgrim stream poured along the old Roman road through Leon and Astorga and the Vierzo passes; and perhaps when the fame of the shrine was at its height there was no other spot in Europe which drew so great a throng.
Even to this day we may catch faint echoes of its ancient celebrity:—“Please to remember the{65} grotto!” our school-children’s August refrain. They do not know what they commemorate; but their date (by the Julian calendar) and their grotto and candle-ends and cockle-shells are all the prerogatives of St James.